It's that scary time of the year again

[Diana Michelle]

It is less than 4 weeks until Halloween and it got me to thinking of Halloweens long past when I was young. How we loved it and for weeks we looked to that special night when we could run through the neighborhood filling our baskets and bags with candy. Does anyone really do this anymore? Back in the old days when I lived near Ann Arbor I always enjoyed passing out candy and seeing the delighted looks on the children when I dropped a couple of candy bars into their buckets.

Up here where I now live we have "Trunk or Treat." It is organized by one of the local churches and we all pull into the parking lot and from 6 to 8 that evening the kids and circulate and we all pass out candy. It is a huge event up here, last year I heard they estimated there were over 1200 kids that went through.

[DonnaT]

We still have kids in the neighborhood, some even getting dropped off from other neighborhoods. Doesn't seem to be as many now as there was when my kids were little.

There are places that do trunk or treat also.

[April Rose]

I live in a New England town where door to door trick or treating is still practiced. It seems to ebb and flow in waves as generations of children grow up an move on. I would say the overall trend has been downward, though. I don't know if that is hover-parenting or not, because all of our friends' kids are long grown up.

[KimberlyS]

Kid still come around here but not as much because not as many younger kids in the neighborhood many of the houses are rentals with college kids. We get from 10 to 30. A block down they get more kids as several people do a lot of outdoor decorating. A nice that lives in a different town in a "Popular" neighborhood get hundreds of kids come by. One year we handed out adult treats also. Hey they have to have fun also.

[April Rose]

Diana, I noticed a sign in my town today advertising a Trunk or Treat. This is something I'd never seen before. Guess I'm getting old.

[Debbie Jean]

My present-day Halloween experience parallels that of April Rose as far as the "giving" end of trick-or-treat is concerned. We have "adult" Halloween parties in our neighborhood too, but those activities are probably not suitable material for this forum.

Now for a memory of Halloween past (when I was 8 or 9), courtesy of a cut-and-paste from my autobiography:

Halloween
Trick or treat became for me more of a treatment than a treat that fall. We filled large pillow cases with candy, and when they got full we stuffed our pockets and then our shirts. We modified our costumes and went back for “seconds” at the places that gave out the best stuff (like caramel apples, my favorite “fall” treat then and now). When we got home the parents warned us: “You kids go easy on the candy now. Don’t eat it all at once or you’ll get sick. Just one or two pieces then you get ready for bed.” We did as we were told until we got into bed. I pulled up the window shade a bit so the bedroom was dimly lit by a nearby street light. It was bright enough to see my candy, but not so bright as to arouse the suspicion of my parents when they went by in the hallway. I proceeded to gorge myself on candy until I could eat no more. I got sicker than I’d ever been or have been since. I honestly thought I was going to die. Lucky for my sister that she was the more obedient of the two of us, she didn’t participate in the candy eating binge. Although she was younger than me, in many ways she had more “smarts”.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Hugs,
Debbie Jean

[Diana Michelle]

April I read somewhere a while back many towns even in the larger metro areas are going to Trunk or Treat as it is safer for the children as it is a more controlled environment with no dashing across the streets. I don't know about others but it is also a social event for those of us passing out candy up here. Most of us have an SUV of sorts so we all sit in the back with a glass of wine or a beer as the kids circulate.